Isaiah 14
1But GOD will pardon Jacob, and will again choose Israel, and will settle them on their own soil. And strangers shall join them and shall cleave to the House of Jacob.
2For peoples shall take them and bring them to their homeland; and the House of Israel shall possess them as slaves and handmaids on GOD’s soil. They shall be captors of their captors and masters to their taskmasters.
3And when GOD has given you rest from your sorrow and trouble, and from the hard service that you were made to serve,
4you shall recite this song of scorn over the king of Babylon:How is the taskmaster vanished,How is oppression with 1QIsᵃ (cf. Septuagint). The traditional reading madhebah is of unknown meaning. ended!
5GOD has broken the staff of the wicked,The rod of tyrants,
6That smote peoples in wrathWith stroke unceasing,That belabored nations in furyIn relentless pursuit.
7All the earth is calm, untroubled;Loudly it cheers.
8Even pines rejoice at your fate,And cedars of Lebanon:“Now that you have lain down,None shall come up to fell us.”
9Sheol below was astirTo greet your coming—Rousing for you the shadesOf all earth’s chieftains,Raising from their thronesAll the kings of nations.
10All speak up and say to you,“So you have been stricken as we were,You have become like us!
11Your pomp is brought down to Sheol,And the strains of your lutes!Worms are to be your bed,Maggots your blanket!”
12How are you fallen from heaven,O Shining One, son of Dawn! How are you felled to earth,O vanquisher of nations!
13Once you thought in your heart,“I will climb to the sky;Higher than the stars of GodI will set my throne.I will sit in the mount of assembly, On the summit of Zaphon:
14I will mount the back of a cloud—I will match the Most High.”
15Instead, you are brought down to Sheol,To the bottom of the Pit.
16They who behold you stare;They peer at you closely:“Is this the manWho shook the earth,Who made realms tremble,
17Who made the world like a wasteAnd wrecked its towns,Who never released his prisoners to their homes?”
18All the kings of nationsWere laid, every one, in honor Each in his tomb;
19While you were left lying unburied,Like loathsome carrion,, “putrefying flesh or blood.” Like a trampled corpse[In] the clothing of slain gashed by the swordWho sink to the very stones of the Pit.
20You shall not have a burial like them;Because you destroyed your country,Murdered your people. Let the breed of evildoersNevermore be named!
21Prepare a slaughtering block for his sons Because of the guilt of their father. Let them not arise to possess the earth!Then the world’s face shall be covered with towns.
22I will rise up against them—declares GOD of Hosts—and will wipe out from Babylon name and remnant, kith and kin—declares GOD—
23and I will make it a home of bitterns, pools of water. I will sweep it with a broom of extermination—declares GOD of Hosts.
24GOD of Hosts has sworn this oath:“As I have designed, so shall it happen;What I have planned, that shall come to pass:
25To break Assyria in My land,To crush him on My mountain.” And his yoke shall drop off them,And his burden shall drop from their backs.
26That is the plan that is plannedFor all the earth;That is why an arm is poisedOver all the nations.
27For GOD of Hosts has planned,Who then can foil it?It is the divine arm that is poised,And who can stay it?
28This pronouncement was made in the year that King Ahaz died:
29Rejoice not, all Philistia,Because the staff of him that beat you is broken.For from the stock of a snake there sprouts an asp,A flying seraph branches out from it.
30The first-born of the poor shall graze And the destitute lie down secure. I will kill your stock by famine,).” And it shall slay the very last of you.
31Howl, O gate; cry out, O city;Quake, all Philistia!For a stout one is coming from the northAnd there is no straggler in his ranks..
32And what will he answer the messengers of any nation?That Zion has been established by GOD:In it, the needy of this people shall find shelter.